Dear Madeleine, My boss is really tough—I would say borderline abusive. It isn’t just to me. He is awful to everyone. Because of this, I am in a constant state of anxiety and my work has definitely suffered. I was very good at my job but I know the quality has decreased because I have…
Want a more purposeful, aligned, and engaged organization? “Make sure managers and direct reports are taking a collaborative approach to performance,” says Susan Fowler, senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies and coauthor of the company’s Self Leadership training program. “It starts with agreed-upon goals,” Fowler continues. “In my early days as a consultant,…
How can an organization have a problem with low trust yet none of its leaders consider themselves untrustworthy? Sounds crazy, right? It must be possible in some sort of cosmic, twilight zone kind of way. Organizations frequently ask us to help them address low trust, yet when we work with the individual managers, none of…
In their academic paper Identifying Primary Characteristics of Servant Leadership, researchers Adam Focht and Michael Ponton share the results of a Delphi study they conducted with scholars in the field of servant leadership. A total of twelve characteristics were identified, five of which were agreed upon by all of the scholars polled. These five most…
I am one of the millions of people who has recently enjoyed a 24-minute video escape into happiness—also known as Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke. The video is fun, it is revealing, it is touching, and it stays on your mind for days to come. That’s lovely in and of itself. But besides Penny Lane, the…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a large team of accountants and other kinds of finance experts. We recently posted a job for a senior budget analyst. One of the applicants is a person who was in the finance department a couple of years back. I wasn’t his boss, but I wasn’t impressed with him then and…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a fairly large group in engineering. My team has a good reputation with the rest of the company and works well together. Except for one person. I have one direct report that I just don’t know what to do with. “K” has always been a little bit prickly and unpredictable, but…
Addressing low trust in a relationship is a challenging issue. As soon as the “t” word—trust—is mentioned, emotions start to rise, defensiveness climbs, and people begin to feel uneasy about where the conversation is headed. When I conduct workshops on building trust, participants often ask me for advice about how they can tell someone they…
Dear Madeleine, I have just been promoted. This has been my career ambition and it has been a long time coming. I have been leading a large team of individual contributors and will now be managing three other managers in addition to some individual contributors. Two of these managers had been my peers and…
One of the most powerful underpinnings of high impact coaching is the match between the client and coach. This match is based on many things and is both a science and an art. Here is how we successfully match clients with coaches at Blanchard. We know our coaches—their strengths, their style, and who fits the…